They weren't happy.
He missed the way the sunshine caught her hair and the way her laugh rang out unexpectedly and the feel of her quick-beating heart pressed briefly against each of his. He missed her sweet compassion and her spicy courage and her salty determination. She flavored his existence in ways that left it bland in her absence, and he knew he would never again taste life the way he used to when she traveled with him.
He missed the way the electricity sparked from her controls and the sound that wavered up and down with her materialization and the brash way she took him where he needed to go. He missed her bitter seriousness and her sour dependence and her dry confidence. She was the one who had stood beside him through all his life, and he knew he would never again have the comfort of her presence in this world.
He could release his love to possess the stars. He was a Time Lord, with no place among the mundane ordinariness of life on earth.
He could forfeit the stars for the sake of his love. He was a human, with no place sitting in a throne forged from time and space itself.
But if only it were that simple.
He loathed to sleep. Each night he dreamt he piloted her once more. Lovingly guiding her with a light touch, rushing around her center again, and seeing places he had never gone before. And each morning he awakened with the constricting feeling of helplessness binding him to earth with the other humans, doomed never to see the stars like that again. How could he have chosen this life over the other?
He loathed to sleep. Each night he dreamt he was with her once more. Passionately taking her with a trembling touch, admiring all her wakefully unseen features, taking what had never been his before now. And each morning he awakened with the suffocating feeling of guilt forcing him to wander eternally without any of those pleasures. How could he have chosen this life over the other?
A year ago, a year which crawled more slowly than any year he had ever experienced before, he had seen her piloted away from him, and he had been envious of the man who had taken her for himself.
A long time ago, made longer by the way the memory rubbed him raw, he had seen her eyes fill with adoration for another man, and he had been jealous of the one who would prove her lifelong companion.
But they knew they had to keep going.
He received the prophecy heralding his death, and rejoiced inwardly. He would die with her surrounding him, he knew, comfortingly able to bring him wherever he liked, and show him whatever he wanted to see before some new man took the reins.
He knew his singular heart would someday stop, and celebrated inside. He would die holding her hand, he knew, consolingly able to convince him there was a life for humans after death, and show him that they would be together forevermore.
And all the time, the words they had heard reverberated meaninglessly in their ignorant ears: "You are not alone."
((Oh God, that ended up dark as hell. I'm so sorry. Well this has been fun. I'm just gonna… curl up in a corner now…))